Monthly Archives: April 2017

Preparations continue for the High Altitude Balloon launch, scheduled for Saturday morning from Overland Corner in the Riverland district of South Australia. This flight is one of the events that is planned as part of the BRL Weekend for the Riverland Radio Club.

The flight track prediction has been quite unstable for a few days but now has settled down into a reasonably accessible area near Renmark. This launch is being conducted in conjunction with the Riverland Radio Club’s BRL Weekend event at the Overland Corner Hotel.

Amateurs from across SA, VIC and NSW are invited to take part in one of the many amateur Radio facets of this flight, from receiving and relaying the telemetry, making contacts through the new balloon repeater and monitoring either direct or via the Internet the Wenet HD imagery payload.

Balloon Repeater Frequencies

This is the first test flight of a new experimental cross band voice repeater that has been built with weight in mind to fly under our balloons.The balloon repeater should be heard on:

Please note that this repeater is experimental, and may have performance issues during the flight.

To transmit to the balloon at the maximum range of 800km (once the balloon reaches 100,000ft ++) you should only need approximately 10-20W and an 2-4dB gain antenna.

Receiving the balloon at 400km range in a handheld environment should be achievable, but to hear the repeater at the maximum range of 800km you should expect to need a 10dB gain Yagi for a 0.4uV capable receiver and 2dB feeder loss

This setup is much the same as the LEO satellites but without the high speed Doppler shift.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CAN HEAR IT BEFORE YOU TRANSMIT!

Additionally, the receiver used in the repeater (a Dorji DRA818) appears to have quite sharp receive filters, which results in the repeater dropping out if the input signal is over-deviated (>4.8 kHz dev). Please talk using a regular speaking voice when using the repeater to avoid issues.

Special Event Callsign via the Balloon

As part of the WIA AGM & Convention weekend promotion, we also hope to activate VK5WOW, the special event callsign for that event, via the Balloon Repeater!

Contacts with the special event callsign via the balloon will qualify towards the Convention Award. The flight payloads will be one of the topics presented at the convention by Mark VK5QI, so make a contact through the balloon and then come on down to Hahndorf between May 19-21st to hear about how Project Horus flys and how you too can get involved in this fascinating aspect of the hobby!

Other Balloon Payloads

Other payloads being flown on this flight will include:

our standard 100bps 7N1 RTTY telemetry transmitter on 434.650MHz, and

the Wenet imaging payload which will downlink on 441.2MHz at 115Kbit/s, and which will stream HD photos during the flight.

If you would like to learn more about how to get involved in tracking the balloon, take a look at the following resources on the club website.

Caveats – The weather may beat us

There is a small wrinkle in the plans currently and that is the weather. There have been significant rainfalls across the region in the last few days which may have made many of the dirt roads we might need to use impassable. The team is monitoring the situation and will advise if we have to call it off due to access. It currently depends on where the landing zone ends up. Stay tuned, and understand we are trying to plan a way to ensure we do get into the air on Saturday!

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Continuing with our beginners series presentations this year, this month we have Chris VK5SA who will talk us through the basics of the simple wire HF antenna. He will explain the characteristics of a set of simple to build yet effective HF antennas that anyone can make, often for less than $100 worth of materials. He will show you the merits and limitations of several of them, including:

Basic Dipoles

Offset Centre Fed Dipole

Inverted V

Fan Dipole

Terminated Folded Dipole

Samples of how to build many of these will also be on hand for people to take a look at.

Meeting Time & Location

The meeting will be held at the Reedbeds Community Centre, located off of Phelps Court, in Fulham. The clubrooms will open at 7.45pm with the meeting to commence at 8.00pm sharp.

Tea, coffee and cake will be available for a small donation after the presentation. Following that, the monthly business meeting will be held.

As always, AREG meetings are open to everyone, so if you are interested in starting out on HF, then this is a great opportunity to hear about some simple antennas to get you underway!

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The Amateur Radio Experimenters Group is please to announce that it will be supporting an Amateur Radio focused balloon launch, to take place at the Riverland Radio Club’s VK5BRL Weekend event at Overland Corner Hotel in the Riverland.

This event is aimed at bringing together members of the Riverland Radio Club and amateurs from across SA & Victoria, in particular those who participate in the VK5BRL bi-weekly net on HF (heard on 7115kHz at 8.30am Wednesday and Saturdays).

The morning festivities start off with an early breakfast of coffee, tea and of course bacon, eggs and sausages. This is then followed by the BRL net. The AREG are looking to launch the balloon some time around 11am (to be confirmed) when the NOTAM is raised later this week.

AREG & Project Horus Involvement

The AREG will be marking this weekend with a special balloon flight. It has been some time since the flying repeater was heard on air, so it was felt that it was time to put some more amateur radio back into the balloon flights.

Please note that this repeater is experimental, and may have performance issues during the flight.

To transmit to the balloon at the maximum range of 800km (once the balloon reaches 100,000ft ++) you should only need approximately 5-10W and an 2-4dB gain antenna.

Receiving the balloon at 400km range in a handheld environment should be achievable, but to hear the repeater at the maximum range of 800km you should expect to need a 10dB gain Yagi for a 0.4uV capable receiver and 2dB feeder loss

This setup is much the same as the LEO satellites but without the high speed Doppler shift.

PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CAN HEAR IT BEFORE YOU TRANSMIT!

Additionally, the receiver used in the repeater (a Dorji DRA818) appears to have quite sharp receive filters, which results in the repeater dropping out if the input signal is over-deviated (>4.8 kHz dev). Please talk using a regular speaking voice when using the repeater to avoid issues.

As we will be flying from Overland Corner instead of near Adelaide, coverage at apogee should almost reach Canberra. Contacts from Melbourne to Adelaide through the balloon should definitely be possible.

Other Balloon Payloads

Other payloads being flown on this flight will include:

our standard 100bps 7N1 RTTY telemetry transmitter on 434.650MHz, and

the Wenet imaging payload which will downlink on 441.2MHz at 115Kbit/s, and which will stream HD photos during the flight.

If you would like to learn more about how to get involved in tracking the balloon, take a look at the following resources on the club website.

WIA AGM & Convention Special Event Callsign to be Net Control on the balloon repeater

The Riverland Radio Club will be activating the WIA AGM & Convention special event call sign VK5WOW via the balloon repeater during the event. Contacts with VK5WOW through the balloon will qualify for the award certificate.

SORRY! ALL SOLD OUT on APRIL 1st 2017– Stay tuned next year for more Amateur Radio products from the mad scientists division of the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group!

After months of rigorous testing, the Amateur Radio Experimenters Group Inc is pleased to announce the beta version of our new DX Buster(tm)! is nearly ready for initial release. What is it you might ask? Well, it is designed to help you to break through pile ups during DX Contests and DXPeditions, ensuring your signal is the one heard clear and true, first time, every-time!

There will be no more disappointment that the DX got away when you are using a DXBuster!(tm), even if you are only a small 100W pistol or 400W VK “high power” station located more than double the distance from that rare DX station compared to the majority (as is often the case when comparing VK to Europe, North America and Japan where they run 1kW or more). Now, with DX Buster!(tm) on your team, you can rest assured your signal will always be clearly heard among the pileups at the DX stations end, guaranteeing you will get that rare one in your log, even with modest power.

How does it work?

DX Buster!(tm) is a DSP device you insert into your microphone audio stream, and then also connect to the Internet. It works by mixing your transmitted audio with an anti-phase, time correlated / corrected version of the signals that the DX station is listening to, based on what is being received via any WebSDR located close to the major source of the DX calling pile-up stations.

Using patented Flux capacitor technology, and augmented by feeds from the Reverse Beacon and PSK Reporter systems tuned to the WSJT JT65 networks as well as space weather predictions from the NOAA and Australian Bureau of Meteorology, the propagation channel between your station and the rare DX is computed. Then, the anti-phase signals matching the majority of the pile up stations within 4kHz of your signal are delay matched to your station and then injected into your audio. The rest follows the laws of physics! When the out of phase signals are combined at the DX stations receiver with the other pile up traffic, that traffic is attenuated, while your own audio laid over the top passes through unaffected. The end result is a minimum 10-30dB improvement in your apparent signal to noise ratio as measured at the DX station.

Don’t quite believe it? Take a look at the following waterfall charts and sample audio streams to be convinced!

Currently only a prototype of the unit is available, as a number of technical details are still being refined to make it adaptable to as many transceivers as possible. As soon as these are resolved, we will open our books for orders!

Support AREG

If you are a regular user of the AREG repeater network then why not consider becoming a member and support the club that supports you? Alternatively, why not consider making a donation to help maintain AREG's repeater facilities?